1. The Telegraph reports that “between April 2006 and April this year, offenders serving community sentences and suspended sentences were convicted of a total of 121 murders. There were a total of 1,004 serious crimes committed by offenders being supervised by the Probation Service, including 22 attempted murders, 103 rapes and 682 other serious violent or sexual offences. Another 374 alleged offences committed by criminals in the community have yet to come to trial.”
2. It would appear, from Ministry of Justice figures, that there has been a rise in the number of offenders being spared jail and given community-based sentences instead.
3. It has been some years, of course, since I sat as a judge but it seems to me that the present Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, who isn’t a lord because of Charlie Falconer’s jiggery pokery with the Constitution some years ago, has got a fair amount of work on his hands. Fortunately, for the Justice Secretary, The Sun and other newspapers of appeal to the majority of English readers in this country, are more concerned with what Jonathan Ross and Willy Brand are up to, but it won’t be long before their attention is engaged by these remarkable figures and readers, as they eat their full English breakfasts in the cafes of our beautiful island, will be able to rant about prison, transportation, hanging, PCSOs, congestion charging, traffic wardens and anything else that comes into their heads at the time – possibly punctuated with appropriate words derived from Anglo-Saxon.
Old habits die hard… but I think it is time to depart from the strictures of the English judgment writing style and break out…..
It is a pleasure to be invited to be a columnist on this blog and I shall take advantage of the invitation, freed as I am from the need to sit in judgement, freed from the need to insert unusual bits of Da Vinci style code into my judgments to keep up with Mr Justice Peter Smith and his magnificent black moustache worthy of a Victorian beadle, and enjoy what is happening in the legal world.
I haven’t worked out quite how I am going to play this. Charon simply asked me to keep to the rules of late night blogging and hit the juice while I blogged. This, I am finding remarkably easy to do – and the convenience of an Oddbins, but 45 yards from my present lodgings will, no doubt, assist.
I keep my hand in by reading the usual stuff and I note today that LawandMore have a list of ten legal blogs and Charon’s blog is on it. I also noted the rather unusual editorial reference, a salutation to Charon from the Editor.. and I quote: ” Charon, we salute you and sorry for setting your chest hair on fire.”
Charon explained that he had been to a lunch at the LawandMore offices earlier in the year – and had enjoyed the experience immensely. He declined to comment as to how his chest hair came to be set alight… he merely muttered res ipsa loquitur as he left to buy a bottle at the bar.
I hope to be able to write once a week or so, provided the Grim Reaper does not get tooled up with a new Googlephone (as Geeklawyer seems to have done) and finds out where I am. I have taken the precaution of not taking foreign holidays so I do not need one of these new passports with antennae built allowing the government to track my whereabouts at all times. I shall be back, hopefully at the weekend. Do call me Henry – it is the name I am now using.
Have a good one….
***
.
Some time ago , at the invitation of an editor at LawandMore I went to Kensington Place – a good restaurant in Notting Hill (area). Fun evening. I wrote a review. 
happening in the parallel universe covered by that great British institution… Some days I speak like a BBC news reader… I am working on a Channel 4 style…. and if figures rise I may be encouraged to go off piste and start phoning people to see if they would like to go drinking with me. I shall leave requests to sleep with their daughters or grand daughters to the professionals.
Jonathan Ross and replace it with the film Speed. However, there are growing calls for the corporation to screen an episode of the classic 1970s comedy series in which Mr Sachs played the role of the blundering Spanish waiter Manuel.”
these two blokes, for me, the most extraordinary thing was to see a British prime minister, in the midst of the most severe financial crisis since 1929, taking time to wade in demanding investigations. Brown, clearly, is obsessed by investigations. Perhaps, thwarted by constitutional law from having Osborne investigated last week, he saw an opportunity to get an investigation here. Bizarre. Anyway…. apologies have or are being made and Brand has fallen on his sword by resigning from his BBC show, showing resolution not always shared by politicians when things go pear shaped. 
things. In any event, the author is certainly right in comparing BPP to primary school; the materials have pretty pictures and you get talked to as though you are, indeed, 7 years old. All that’s missing are the one-third pint bottles of luke warm milk that Thatcher snatched away. Oh, and a sand pit.”
An amusing video of a US judge ‘shredding a law student who appeared at The People’s Court.… he got ripped apart by the judge. Preparation is all and not always a good idea to argue with the judge when your law is bad. . 
Matt Dastardly, managing partner of leading City boutique law firm Muttley Dastardly LLP, is working late in his office in the City. His PA, Eva Braun, has chosen an elegant pair of Charles Jourdan high heeled shoes for the meeting this evening and is, as always, dressed in a well cut black skirt suit.
when it was no longer possible for my id, my ego, my psyche or my stomach, to cope with any more calves liver and the search was on for a new food fad. For the moment… it is STEAK PIES… or, as the French like to call them… 
***
younger and gave us a photo to show a ‘Shadow Chancellor of The Future’ (pic right) There is no suggestion that Osborne smoked the greenery covering ‘Natalie’s’ face. Natalie told us that he was not into drugs. The Bullingdon Club does not, in fact, approve of drugs like cannabis… largely because it interferes, apparently, with the desire of members to smash restaurants and other things up –
a nutter… This excellent post by Hugo Rifkind in The Times today… gets my “Piece of the week award”…
things with the hands. I may have to get one….
On a day when Nat Rothschild told Osborne not to mess with him any further, on a day when all seems to have gone mysteriously quiet on the Osborne story – The Guardian has a great story about George Osborne’s boorish behaviour on holiday this summer in Greece. It is worth a read for a viewpoint on how the educated, apparently well mannered, Englishman with aspirations to high office behaves. 
The tale of Osborne, The Oligarch and The Wardrobe continues to grind on. Gordon Brown has now called for an investigation. Into what, precisely, is another question. There is some doubt as to whether any act is capable of being investigated in this matter as yet.
The Daily Legal News and podcast is now up on Insitelaw. 
There was an interesting leader in the Times this morning suggesting that Russian oligarchs need to raise $120 billion to enable them to meet margin calls. Putin, in all but name president of Russia, The Times suggests, is waiting in the wings to offer aid and, thereby, bring back under state control assets sold off in the early days of Russian capitalism.
“remote searches of computer hard drives.” 
So there I was, woodbine in one hand, a glass of red in the other and I was thinking about 
RollonFriday
I had a look. I played the video. He wasn’t a very good drummer and looked even more bizarre, clad in denim with a homburg hat on, when he climbed out of his cab and started vandalising his own cab with his drum sticks. If he goes on Britain’s Got Talent, I’d advise him to find a dog with a brain tumour and only five days to live.
Two good articles in the press today – 
Charon QC 